“Adopted,” I said.
“That’s horseshit and you know it. You’re my brother. And I know you’re only here because of me.”
“Actually, I was hoping I’d get to say ‘ten-four’ on the radio later.”
She snorted. “All right, be an asshole. But thanks anyway.”
“You’re welcome.”
She picked up the radio. “Doakes. What’s he doing?”
After a brief pause, Doakes replied, “Looks like he’s talking on a cell phone.”
Deborah frowned and looked at me. “If he’s running, who’s he going to talk to on the phone?”
I shrugged. “He might be arranging a way out of the country. Or-”
I stopped. The idea was far too stupid to think about, and that should have kept it out of my head automatically, but somehow there it was, bouncing off the gray matter and waving a small red flag.
“What?” Deborah demanded.
I shook my head. “Not possible. Stupid. Just a wild thought that won’t go away.”
“All right. How wild?”
“What if- Now I did say this was stupid.”
“It’s a lot stupider to dick around like this,” she snapped. “What’s the idea?”
“What if Oscar is calling the good Doctor and trying to bargain his way out?” I said. And I was right; it did sound stupid.
Debs snorted. “Bargain with what?”
“Well,” I said, “Doakes said he’s carrying a bag. So he could have money, bearer bonds, a stamp collection. I don’t know. But he probably has something that might be even more valuable to our surgical friend.”
“Like what?”
“He probably knows where everybody else from the old team is hiding.”
“Shit,” she said. “Give up everybody else in exchange for his life?” She chewed on her lip as she thought that over. After a minute she shook her head. “That’s pretty far-fetched,” she said.
“Far-fetched is a big step up from stupid,” I said.
“Oscar would have to know how to get in touch with the Doctor.”
“One spook can always find a way to get to another. There are lists and databases and mutual contacts, you know that. Didn’t you see Bourne Identity?”
“Yeah, but how do we know Oscar saw it?” she said.
“I’m just saying it’s possible.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. She looked out the window, thinking, then made a face and shook her head. “Kyle said something-that after a while you’d forget what team you were on, like baseball with free agency. So you’d get friendly with guys on the other side, and- Shit, that’s stupid.”
“So whatever side Danco is on, Oscar could find a way to reach him.”
“So fucking what. We can’t,” she said.
We were both quiet for a few minutes after that. I suppose Debs was thinking about Kyle and wondering if we would find him in time. I tried to imagine caring about Rita the same way and came up blank. As Deborah had so astutely pointed out, I was engaged and still didn’t get it. And I never would, either, which I usually regard as a blessing. I have always felt that it was preferable to think with my brain, rather than with certain other wrinkled parts located slightly south. I mean, seriously, don’t people ever see themselves, staggering around drooling and mooning, all weepy-eyed and weak-kneed and rendered completely idiotic over something even animals have enough sense to finish quickly so they can get on with more sensible pursuits, like finding fresh meat?
Well, as we all agreed, I didn’t get it. So I just looked out across the water to the subdued lights of the homes on the far side of the causeway. There were a few apartment buildings close to the toll booth, and then a scattering of houses almost as big. Maybe if I won the lottery I could get a real estate agent to show me something with a small cellar, just big enough for one homicidal photographer to fit in snugly under the floor. And as I thought it a soft whisper came from my personal backseat voice, but of course there was nothing I could do about that, except perhaps applaud the moon that hung over the water. And across that same moon-painted water floated the sound of a clanging bell, signaling that the drawbridge was about to go up.
The radio crackled. “He’s moving,” Doakes said. “Gonna run the drawbridge. Watch for him-white Toyota 4Runner.”
“I see him,” Deborah said into the radio. “We’re on him.”
The white SUV came across the causeway and onto 15th Street just moments before the bridge went up. After a slight pause to let him get ahead, Deborah pulled out and followed. At Biscayne Boulevard he turned right and a moment later we did, too. “He’s headed north on Biscayne,” she said into the radio.
“Copy that,” Doakes said. “I’ll follow out here.”
The 4Runner moved at normal speed through moderate traffic, keeping to a mere five miles per hour above the speed limit, which in Miami is considered tourist speed, slow enough to justify a blast of the horn from the drivers who passed him. But Oscar didn’t seem to mind. He obeyed all the traffic signals and stayed in the right lane, cruising along as if he had no particular place to go and was merely out for a relaxing after-dinner drive.
As we came up on the 79th Street Causeway, Deborah picked up the radio. “We’re passing 79th Street,” she said. “He’s in no hurry, proceeding north.”
“Ten-four,” Doakes said, and Deborah glanced at me.
“I didn’t say anything,” I said.
“You thought the hell out of it,” she said.
We moved on north, stopping twice at traffic signals. Deborah was careful to stay several cars behind, no mean feat in Miami traffic, with most of the cars trying to go around, over, or through all the others. A fire engine went wailing past in the other direction, blasting its horn at the intersections. For all the effect it had on the other drivers, it might have been a lamb bleating. They ignored the siren and clung to their hard-won places in the scrambled line of traffic. The man behind the wheel of the fire engine, being a Miami driver himself, simply wove in and out with the horn and siren playing: Duet for Traffic.
We reached 123d Street, the last place to cross back to Miami Beach before 826 ran across at North Miami Beach, and Oscar kept heading north. Deborah told Doakes by radio as we passed it.
“Where the hell is he going?” Deborah muttered as she put down the radio.
“Maybe he’s just driving around,” I said. “It’s a beautiful night.”
“Uh-huh. You want to write a sonnet?”
Under normal circumstances, I would have had a splendid comeback for that, but perhaps due to the thrilling nature of our chase, nothing occurred to me. And anyway, Debs looked like she could use a victory, however small.
A few blocks later, Oscar suddenly accelerated into the left lane and turned left across oncoming traffic, raising an entire concerto of angry horns from drivers moving in both directions.
“He’s making a move,” Deborah told Doakes, “west on 135th Street.”
“I’m crossing behind you,” Doakes said. “On the Broad Causeway.”
“What’s on 135th Street?” Debs wondered aloud.
“ Opa-Locka Airport,” I said. “A couple of miles straight ahead.”
“Shit,” she said, and picked up the radio. “Doakes- Opa-Locka Airport is out this way.”
“On my way,” he said, and I could hear his siren cutting on before his radio clicked off.
Opa-Locka Airport had long been popular with people in the drug trade, as well as with those in covert operations. This was a handy arrangement, considering that the line between the two was often quite blurry. Oscar could very easily have a small plane waiting there, ready to whisk him out of the country and off to almost anyplace in the Caribbean or Central or South America-with connections to the rest of the world, of course, although I doubted he would be headed for the Sudan, or even Beirut. Someplace in the Caribbean was more likely, but in any case fleeing the country seemed like a reasonable move under the circumstances, and Opa-Locka Airport was a logical place to start.